Aaron: Retraction of Identity

Elizabeth Kelly graduated in 2015 with a Studio Art major and History minor. While at Hendrix, she studied photography with Professor Maxine Payne, focusing primarily on self-portraiture. Upon leaving Hendrix, Kelly received a M.Ed. from the University of Arkansas at Little Rock with a focus in Art Education. She then began a career as an elementary and middle school art educator. Kelly most recently worked as the art teacher at the St. Theresa Catholic School in Little Rock, where she combined teaching with her personal art practice by creating collaborative photographs with students. Kelly now attends the Moore College of Art’s M.F.A. program in Socially Engaged Art.

This piece, a collaboration with one of her students, Aaron Rodriguez- Carvajal, is part of a body of work that Kelly designed with her 6^th grade art students. She asked students, “if someone took a photo of you, what would you want them to know?” Kelly photographed portraits of the students, which were then placed alongside their answer to the preceding question and printed in cyanotype. Through these images, which were developed in Hendrix’s dark room, Kelly taught her students about traditional process photography, while simultaneously helping them explore and voice their experiences, ones often centered around their Hispanic identity.